Page 3 - The Future of Computing

I don't know man, I can easily see video cards stepping up to dual/quad core just like CPU's have done...

but surely the cores would be packed on to one card, instead of multiple cards.

which is what i was saying. I dont like the idea of buying 2 of the same card to stick in my machine. Id prefer one card with the power of the 2.

Using 2 cards has no real benefit, if you really want to have 4 cores that will give you more points on a benchmark and will look identical when in gaming to another single card, whats the point. Benchmarking is for oc'ers, i say. Its to compete with other users that have the same card IMO.

so i cant see SLi carrying on for much longer.

im prepared for a beating now by sli users.

Well one more step forward, the 8800 series cards are now in stock all over the place. Newegg

To be followed by kentsfields this month, in November alone computing is going to change drastically.

I ask again: When do you think solid state storage will get to the price range and ubiquity of normal harddrives?

when hard drives cost more to produce then equally-capable solid state storage.

You can get a 500 GB hard drive for less then $300, but 500 GB of ram would cost you a kidney.

It has to be asked compared to what? For example a 19" LCD monitor is about the same price as a 19" CRT price a few years ago but in the meantime 19" CRT monitors have dropped in price. 19" CRT monitors can be had for arount $100 but the quality compared to a similar monitor made a few years ago is unknown. The variety and number of manufacturers is certainly a lot less.

Back to solid state storage storage...

A lot of people would like to know that. Samsung has lead the way this year by introducing a notebook computer with a solid-state drive replacing the usual mechanical hard drive. The big problem now is limited write cycles. When that problem is adequately solved then they will be accepted by more computer manufacturers. The advantages will then make then very attractive. Solid State Drives (SSD) use less power, run cooler, are much quieter (no noise at all), and are as fast or faster than conventional mechanical hard drives. The high cost relative to conventional drives will then be overcome by market forces which will lead to more competition, inovation, and lower manufacturing costs.

I think by the end of 2007, we'll be spun a load of crap about having the most powerful hardware; most of you will buy into it, all the while pretending not to realise that you have too much power, and it's not that you need it, it's that it glosses over poor programming... You can run today's games on yesterdays hardware easily. It's just not worth keeping up these days.

Wait until everyone is running Vista, and you need 8GB RAM just so all the pretty will work well.

There are issues to resolve in solid-state memory which is keeping it away from being a top hard-drive replacement, namely access speed.

The engineers are working madly at it, and I don't doubt that there will be a NVRAM-type hard drive replacement in every new computer by 2015.

I can just see it now-- massive hardware RAID arrays, three or four high-speed buffers, read-ahead processing, and backup power storage built into a solid-state drive so that access time is reduced to acceptable levels. Corporate users will gladly pay 50% more for drives with MTBF reduced by orders of magnitude.

If you think I'm just blowing smoke, take a good look at the technology that runs your current memory sticks-- DDR and DDR2 are full of stop-gap hacks to reduce access times and speed up delivery of data to the processor.

I'm thinking 4GB will be enough.

XP required 256MB (honestly) and it doesn't fly until 1GB. Vista requires 1GB (honestly) and it won't fly until 4GB...

256 lol I ran it on 64 for a week when I had to replace my ram.

I was reading something and I read that Microsoft is going to get into the hardware business even more then the mice and keyboards. Anyone know of this?

Having 2 rocks, and I had forgotten about the limited writing amount to flash memory.

What about a better OS that barely writes to the disk?

As long as Microsoft is programming it. the OS will always be a fat OS with features and other useless crap that you don't need.

They have make Solid State Disks (SSD) for a number of years now that are designed for heavy duty use such as in servers. They are designed to last a number of years possibly lasting longer than the mechanical hard drives they replace. They are many times sold with a choice of IDE, SATA, or SCSI interfaces. They are a world apart from the usual compact flash commonly seen in multimedia drevices, cameras, and thumb drives. These in contrast will last only a matter of months in heavy use.

Another inovation is hybrid hard drive. Hybrid hard drive are conventional hard drives that have 128MB or 256MB of Compact Flash cache memory. With these drives booting and resuming can be twice as fast. Also with the power savings of using Flash memory laptops could run 20-30 minutes longer than before. The initial versions will be designed to run on laptops with Windows Vista.

A new use for compact flash thumb drives is with Windows Vista ReadyBoost. It acts to extend the virtual memory in a PC. Performace is better because access is faster than with the usual virtual memory aka known as pagefile.sys on your hard drive. The trick is to find one that is fast enough. If it is not Vista will not enable ReadyBoost with it. Here is a list someone is compiling:

ReadyBoost Compatibility - USB and other flash memory devices
http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/misc/readyboost/?make=all&sort=capacity

What about those ram hard drive pci express riser cards that they were working on? Isn't that following the same concept as the 128meg-256 meg cache on the laptops?

Also didn't samsung release a 32gig ssd hard drive for notebooks last year that toshiba and panasonic were going to use in their laptops?

If you search you will find a numbers of companies selling Solid State Drives (SSD) using either
DDR DIMMs or NAND Flash. They can have IDE ATA, SATA, SCSI, or Fiber Channel interfaces.

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DDRdrive (still just a prototype, was supposed to launch Q1 2006)
PCI Express X1 slot
Up to 4 x 2GB DDR DIMMs for total capacity of 8 GB
http://www.ddrdrive.com/ddrdrive_prototype.html

Gigabyte's i-RAM: Solid State Storage
PCI slot
Onboard SATA connector supports 1.5Gb/s data transfer rate
Up to 4 x 1GB DDR DIMMs for total capacity of 4 GB
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Storage/Default.aspx

HyperOs HyperDrive IV 8Gb & 16GB, ATA133 (PATA and SATA)
Requires 5-1/4 drive bay
Onboard IDE or SATA connectors
8GB Model: Up to 8 x 1GB DDR DIMMs for total capacity of 8 GB
16GB Model: Up to 8 x 2GB DDR DIMMs for total capacity of 16 GB
http://www.hyperossystems.co.uk/07042003/products.htm#hyperos2006

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Samsung Flash Solid State Disk Form Factor Lineup
2.5" form factor: 4, 8, 16, 32 GB capacities
1.8" form factor: 4, 8, 16, 32 GB capacities
Slim form factor: 32 GB capacity
Small form factor: 8, 16 GB capacities
Interface (All): IDE ATA UDMA66
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/FlashSSD/index.htm

SAMSUNG Electronics Launches the World’s First PCs with NAND Flash-based Solid State Disk
http://www.samsung.com/PressCenter/PressRelease/PressRelease.asp?seq=20060523_0000257520